1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to transducers such as force and displacement transducers including accelerometers and, more particularly, to such transducers that also provide an output representative of temperature.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Transducers are generally sensitive to temperature. In order to compensate for temperature-induced errors and to improve the accuracy of the transducer, the temperature in the vicinity of the transducer is measured and used for compensation purposes. Generally, this requires attaching a thermal sensor to a convenient point on or near the transducer being compensated. Circuitry is also provided to convert the output of the thermal sensor into a temperature representative signal suitable for input to an analog-to-digital converter or a voltage-to-frequency converter. However, these approaches require the use of additional parts that may add heat and potentially interfere with the transducer, and because of their spacing from the transducer, such sensors may not provide an accurate measurement of the transducer temperature.